First ever Tribeca games festival recently ended. Featured lots of big names in the game industry such as Ken Levine (Bioshock), Sam Lake from Remedy (Max Payne, Alan Wake, Quantum Break), Hideo Kojima (you know who he is..). You can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/138896565?no-mobile-redirect=true

Sean Vanaman (Firewatch) starts at 2.30, Sam Lake at 4.30, Kojima at 5.30 and Ken Levine at 6.30. Not sure about the rest as I haven’t finished watching it all yet.

Both Tribeca and Polygon interviews touches on games and movies (similarities in the dev process, storytelling etc.). Polygon mentions difficulties with making a movie from a game (at 8.00) and how they often fail and mentions how some industry folks have suggested that you’d need to transfer the feeling of playing the game as well as retelling the story. Sam Lake suggests that it is the heart of the story that’s important.

I’m thinking the heart of the story contributes to the feeling that you get when you play the game. Maybe that’s what was missing in the Max Payne movie? The Max Payne movie had a lot of things I’d expect from a Max Payne movie. Actor choices was alright, visually they got it right, the story was (largely) there, but something was missing. Obviously, whether you liked the movie or not, is subjective (personal taste, beauty in the eye of the beholder and all that). But if you loved the games you probably have some idea about what it was that you liked in the games and maybe what you thought the movie was missing.